


Tying Up the Threads

by Dandello



Series: A Town Called Smallville [5]
Category: Eureka (TV), Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman
Genre: Beverly Barlow (mention), Gen, Nathan Stark (mention)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-06-06
Packaged: 2018-11-09 21:18:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11113065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dandello/pseuds/Dandello
Summary: Eureka has been sold to Rockwell Industries but there are loose threads…





	Tying Up the Threads

Eureka was shutting down. After sixty-two years of cutting edge technological development by some of the greatest minds on the planet, Global Dynamics, the company that the little company town had been built for, was closing its doors.

It would take months, if not years, to completely turn everything off. Many of the homes had their own SNAP reactors, the Global Dynamics building had its own reactor and there were still experiments that would need more than the allotted time to shut down. The D.O.D. had originally promised them six weeks to pack everything up. Then they cut it down to six days. The speeding up of the closing down had nearly cost them the town, and possibly the planet, when the D.O.D. packed up and removed equipment essential for safeguarding processes that hadn't yet been shut down.

Eureka, and the planet, had been preternaturally lucky once again.

It was a sad little group sitting in Café Diem. Vincent kept apologizing that his refrigerator was nearly bare since everything that wasn't perishable had been packed up and shipped out the day before. The perishables were… perishing.

Grace Monroe Deacon, Henry's wife, had been released from wherever she'd been being held on charges of treason. The charges had been dropped at the behest of someone who had tipped the authorities onto much much bigger fish. So that was one bright spot in an otherwise dismal day.

But still, being forced to move, to look for new jobs away from the 'family' that made Eureka what it was – that was painful. Jack Carter knew he had a standing offer from Homeland Security and his wife, Dr. Allison Blake, could write her own ticket at any hospital or medical research facility on the planet.  At least his daughter Zoe had come home from Harvard to visit a few days before her commencement ceremony. She was graduating summa cum laude. Not bad for a kid who only five years before had all the makings of a juvenile delinquent.

Carter and the rest of the family would fly out for Zoe's graduation and probably never come back to Oregon. But he was going to miss Henry and Grace, Jo and Zane, Fargo and Holly, Vincent, Taggart, so many others who had become part of his life over the past six years. He would even miss S.A.R.A.H., the A.I. house he and Allison lived in with their blended family.

Deputy Andy would become the caretaker for the empty town once all the humans left. Andy was an android and so needed no food – nothing except a place to recharge – and he would keep S.A.R.A.H. company. Andy was immune to boredom so he would do his job, efficiently and without complaint, until someone turned him off. Hopefully, that someone would turn S.A.R.A.H. off too.

Vincent walked over to the table, apology written across his face. "I am so sorry but I gave away all the champagne already."

"Oh, Vincent, do not worry. I'm just happy to be here," Grace assured the longtime owner/manager/chef of Café Diem.

"Anything to toast with is fine," Henry added.

"Good, because the gentleman outside asked me to pass this along," Vincent said, handing over the wine bottle he'd had behind his back.

Carter took the bottle and read the label. "Cheval Nuit." The label was very familiar. Unpleasantly familiar.

"1947?" Henry asked, confirming his own suspicions.

Carter nodded. "Yeah."

The café door opened and Carter turned to see Trevor Grant, time traveler from 1947 and former assistant to Albert Einstein, walk in. A woman in a smart business suit followed him in but stopped a short distance away. She had dark hair and eyes. Her age was indeterminate, over thirty and under sixty. She was carrying a brief case. But there was something in her bearing, in her eyes, that whispered 'cop'.

Grant was sporting a fedora, loose tie, and scruffy beard. He looked like someone trying to look 'cool' but missing the mark. He just looked scruffy.

"Grant," Carter greeted stiffly.

"I prefer Dr. Trent Rockwell, sport," Grant said.

"What? Seriously?" Carter asked, echoing the same questions that the others had. "Why... Why'd you choose that name?"

Grant smirked. "Well, Trevor Grant's so 20th century, right? Trent Rockwell, I feel, conjures the essence, the entrepreneurial spirit of a visionary billionaire. A billionaire with so much foresight he's just sunk his entire fortune into a ridiculous project with little chance of financial return."

"What are you talking about?" Henry asked.

Grant shrugged. "I got a call from Douglas. He told me about your funding being cut off. He also gave me a very persuasive argument for keeping the doors open."

Allison caught on first. "You bought Eureka?"

"Well, I am one of the town's founders, after all. Before I hand over the keys I do have one condition," Grant said. He was looking at Allison, much to Carter's annoyance.

"She's married, pal, so no indecent proposals," Carter warned.

Grant actually seemed taken aback by Carter's warning. "No, uh, the current director of G.D. is stepping down. So naturally, he's gonna need a successor." Grant kept watching Carter. "Douglas gave me his recommendations, and I can't imagine Eureka being in better hands."

"I'd be honored..." Carter began only to realize from Allison's expression that he'd been set up, _again_. "...to respect your wishes."

Grant finally looked over to Henry. "Henry? What do you say? Are you ready to change the world?"

Henry looked over to his wife who mouthed 'yes' at him.

"You got a deal." Henry shook Grant's hand.

Allison hugged Henry, congratulating him on his new position. Carter pulled Grant into a hug as well. It seemed that Trevor Grant might not be the sleaze that Carter had suspected. He was saving the town, after all.

"I do still have some details to work out," Grant said after the congratulations were done.

The woman who had come in with Grant stepped over to him and cleared her throat.

Grant seemed surprised to see her still there. "Oh, and this is Ellen Donner. Ms. Donner will be helping manage the money side of things. It's a big investment, after all." With that he walked out.

"So, Grant… I mean Rockwell… owns Eureka…" Carter mused. "So, why do I feel there's another shoe about to drop?"

"Because there is," Donner said. "I'm actually with Crosstime Industries. Crosstime is Rockwell's partner in this acquisition. Even Rockwell Industries doesn't have enough money to purchase Global Dynamics and Eureka outright."

"He didn't mention having a partner," Allison stated.

"I noticed," Donner said. "There's a lot he didn't tell you. There's a lot he doesn't know and there's a lot he doesn't know _we_ know."

Henry gestured for her to sit with them.

She waved Vincent over. "Vincent, a Vinspresso, please, and if you would invite Doctors Fargo, Marten, and Donovan, and Chief Lupo to join us?"

"Already on it," Vincent said with a grin.

"So, want to fill us in on what's really going on?" Carter began.

"I'd rather have everyone together so I only have to go over it once," Donner said. "But… in a nutshell, G.D. is going to have a financial officer watching the books. Doctor Deacon will manage the talent and my staff and I will handle the money. Basically, my job is to make sure the talent doesn't order things that will break the budget. I also happen to be a patent attorney in addition to having experience overseeing the finances and other things at of one of Crosstime Industries' research divisions."

'So, not a cop,' Carter mused silently. But the 'cop' vibe remained.

"Which one?" Allison asked Donner.

"Smallville. Crosstime acquired it a number of years ago," Donner said. "We just never bothered to change the name or the letterhead. I suspect we'll do the same here."

"You bought Smallville?" Henry asked.

"Wait… what's Smallville?" Carter asked.

"Another Truman town," Allison explained. "In Kansas."

"There's another town like this but in Kansas?" Carter asked.

"Not like this," Vincent said. "More history, more corn, fewer trees. I should know. I was born and raised there."

"Also, Smallville doesn't have nearly the number of clueless people messing with the time-space continuum," Donner added.

"They have their own kinds of clueless," Vincent added with a shrug.

"And what do you know about clueless people messing with the time-space continuum?" Henry managed to ask.

"More than you think, and much more than Trevor Grant realizes," Donner said. "Five went back to 1947 and six came forward thanks to Grant's time device."

The other four people at the table went very still. Carter was certain they were all as scared as he was. There were rules against time travel. Life in solitary confinement, or worse, for those discovered having done it.

"You're worried about sanctions?" Donner asked as if she had read their minds. "The threat is… let's say it keeps people from blabbing to other people who might get 'ideas'. But otherwise… why punish the victims? But attempting to manipulate time for personal gain? That is very much frowned upon. So there are protocols."

The café door opened and the four people they were waiting for walked in.

"What's going on?" Fargo asked, openly puzzled. He spotted Donner seated with the others. "Are you one of Doctor Rockwell's people?"

"You could say that," Donner said, opening her brief case. "Ellen Donner, G.D.'s new CFO. Before proceeding, I need everyone here to sign new NDAs." She glanced at Vincent who pulled a small device from his pocket and pressed a button. The door locked and the open sign turned off. There was an odd shimmer across the front windows, making it hard to see out.

Vincent checked a reading on the device and said, "We're secure."

Dodson nodded acknowledgement and handed out folders to the newcomers and the people already seated. She waited for the papers to be signed.

"Wait, doesn't Vincent need one of these, too?" Carter asked, noticing that Donner hadn't handed the chef a folder.

"My NDA is already on file," Vincent said simply.

Donner collected the files and places them back in her briefcase. "Before we start, I have a favor to ask of Doctor Donovan. Please check to see if Doctor Marten's offer from DARPA is genuine and what the position entails."

"Um, JoJo frowns on me using my powers to hack…" Zane began.

Donner chuckled. Then: "I'm sure neither Chief Lupo nor Sheriff Carter will object to you using whatever means you find necessary to confirm that Doctor Marten has been given a legitimate offer from the U.S. government and that she and Doctor Fargo are not walking into a trap set by unfriendly agents."

Zane glanced at Lupo, who gave a quick nod. He started keying instructions into his data-pad and frowned. "Um, Vincent, what happened to the network? I swear it was running when I left the sheriff's office."

"Oh, sorry," Vincent said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out something the size and shape of a dime. He placed the 'coin' on the underside of Zane's data-pad.

Zane's expression cleared as he began working. After several minutes he looked over to Holly and Fargo. "I can't find any current or planned DARPA projects with Holly Marten's name associated with them. I did find a memo warning project managers _against_ hiring Doctor Holly Marten due to 'irregularities' in her recent background."

"But, they told me it was super-secret and I could choose my own team," Holly protested. "Maybe they hid it so well you can't find it."

"Or whoever contacted you was lying about who they were and who they were working for," Zane said. "I traced back the emails you were sent. There was a big effort to hide things but those emails weren't sent from a government server. If the offer _was_ legit and it was sent from a private server, well I'm real sure that's not how it's supposed to be done. But my gut tells me it's a scam."

"You mean Douglas and I don't have new top secret jobs with lots of travel?" Holly asked. She sounded like she was about to cry.

"It's okay," Fargo assured her. "I'm sure, if we ask nicely, Doctor Rockwell will give us jobs."

"I'm pretty sure I don't need to ask Rockwell for permission to offer you two jobs," Henry said with a grin. He glanced at Donner who grinned back at him. "I'm the new director of G.D.," Henry added.

Fargo's eyes widened. "Congratulations! I mean, wow!" His expression shifted to concern. "But who's going to run the fuel station and the garage? I mean, director's a full time job. Not a lot of time for hobbies."

"We'll figure something out," Henry promised. He grinned at Donner. "Now you know Eureka's real priorities: Vincent at Café Diem, and the garage."

"Point taken," Donner said with a laugh. "We should review the budget tomorrow and go over any proposed changes to the G.D. permissions paperwork. I swear the employee contracts haven't been reviewed since they were written. A lot of it is contradictory and some of it doesn't even make sense."

"Um, Andy can probably help with that," Carter said. "He has all the town by-laws in his head and I'm pretty sure he has the G.D. employment contracts in there too."

"That's the android deputy?" Donner asked. "Why didn't the D.O.D. take him away?"

"Andy's… unique," Carter said. "He's his own person. And the effort they'd have to go through to get him to leave S.A.R.A.H. and Eureka… it would get ugly fast, raise questions they don't want to answer… not worth it to them."

Zane had been concentrating on something on his pad. He looked over at Donner, eyes wide in surprise. "You're Jordan Clarke's daughter? And you're married to James Donner. _Doctor_ James Donner, the world's foremost expert in temporal mechanics?"

Donner nodded.

Henry's eyes widened as he made a connection. "I thought the name was familiar. James Donner's the one who finally stabilized Walter Perkins so he wouldn't keep 'de-aging' without a stabilizing device after his 'incident'. Nathan did everything he could think of to get Donner to move to Eureka."

"It wasn't a good time for Jimmy to move the family. And so you know, Doctor Perkins is working at a Crosstime facility. He's done some good work for us… under close supervision. Replicating his ex-wife didn't speak well of his mental stability and we do frown on destroying our little corner of the universe. And yes, Jimmy and our kids will be joining me in a few weeks. He's been looking forward to collaborating with you."

"Uh, wow," Henry managed to get out.

"Wow is right," Zane stated. He looked at the others. "Imagine being told that Albert Einstein wanted to collaborate with you."

"Okay, wow," Carter agreed.

Zane pulled the 'coin' off the back of his pad and inspected it. "Who's making this?"

"Rockwell Industries," Donner answered. "It's a very sophisticated security token."

"I know," Zane said. "And from how it behaved, I'm pretty sure it's based off of one of my designs. One I filed a patent on."

"I'm sure you're right," Donner said. "One of things that Trevor Grant doesn't know _we_ know is that he's made his billions by illicitly acquiring other people's patents and putting his own name on them."

"He told us he'd followed some good advice on investments back in 1947. Johnson & Johnson," Carter said. "Stock splits and interest."

"That only works if there's someone actively maintaining the various accounts, turning in paperwork, paying taxes, that sort of thing," Donner said. "Grant may have gotten some good investment advice back in '47, but somebody had to have been taking care of it and it still wouldn't have been enough to make him a billionaire in 2012. No, he managed to use his device to lay claim to ideas that didn't belong to him, make investments he should have had no way to predict would take off. It's a wonder the SEC didn’t flag him for possible insider trading."

"But, I sent the bridge device away," Fargo stated. "Someplace really, really, safe. And it was dismantled before it was packed up… Wait, she knows about…?"

"She knows," Carter confirmed. "So does Vincent."

"And we're not…?"

"We're okay, I think," Allison assured him.

"Grant's original time bridge required lots of negatively charged energy, like from a solar flare maximum," Henry said, brow furrowed. Then his expression cleared as he realized what probably happened. "Grant built another device eleven years from now, to take advantage of that solar flare maximum and come back to 'now.' Once he left Eureka, we wouldn't have been able to stop him from building a new one. And with Walter Perkins' research and Leo Weinbrenner's research… Grant may have even improved it..."

"Or he had help improving it," Carter muttered, a sour expression on his face. "And maybe access to a really big power supply." He looked around at the puzzled looks. "Why do you think Beverly's people stole the D.E.D.? It had a honkin' big power supply. Enough to power a copy of Grant's bridge device."

"Actually, we're pretty sure he didn't go into the future," Donner said. "But it's very likely he had an accomplice here in Eureka eleven years ago who filed patents on his behalf. Send copies and instructions back in time, have someone do the leg work. He could have sent the actual instructions in a single packet sometime before his device was dismantled."

"When you say 'very likely' you mean you have evidence but not strong enough for a D.A. to take to a grand jury?" Carter asked. "Or you can't risk your sources by taking it a D.A."

"Both... Assuming there was a D.A. willing to take on a crime requiring time travel," Donner said. "Rockwell was incorporated eleven years ago. Trent Rockwell was listed as president and primary shareholder. The other names on the documents were untraceable, no doubt aliases. The company's first big break was from leasing the patent rights to a revolutionary microchip design. That microchip is used in _everything_. And Rockwell's patent was filed 24 hours before another patent was filed for almost exactly the same item. It's happened more than a dozen times in the past eleven years. Ideas that became the basis of extraordinarily profitable industries with two patents that were almost identical filed within 24 hours of each other. With Rockwell always filing first."

"Why are you telling us this?" Allison asked Donner.

"So you understand how serious Grant's improprieties were and are," Donner said. "When Grant's device was activated multiple times to the same time frame, it created an electromagnetic-temporal imbalance. When things are just right, the imbalance manifests as a violent electromagnetic storm. The storm can transfer items through time and potentially across realities, and it may, or may not, return them after forty-eight or so hours. As far as we know, the largest item has been an aircraft carrier moved from 1980 to 1941 and back again. The average reported item appears to be the size a car."

"Seriously, a whole aircraft carrier?" Fargo asked excitedly.

Donner nodded. "Fully loaded, nuclear powered. Luckily, the U.S. Navy isn't in the habit of giving command of aircraft carriers to stupid or excitable ship commanders. It could have gotten very bad very fast."

"So you need us to find a way to stop these storms?" Henry asked.

"There are teams already working on that, but your information concerning Grant's device and Eureka's other time 'mishaps', including this latest one, should help them immeasurably," Donner said. "But, what makes Eureka valuable to Crosstime are a few things the D.O.D. doesn't really have a clue about and luckily neither did Grant since the official research reports and incident reports were, shall we say, remarkably lacking in detail. One of those things is: we have reason to believe that somewhere in Eureka is someone who knows how to make logic diamonds and has done so."

"But I'm betting they still have to get the whole 'let's make a volcano in a non-volcanic region' part worked out," Carter muttered.

"But you have to admit, you and Nathan worked well together when it came to crunch time," Allison added with a smile.

"And Fifi came through, too," Fargo added. "Remember Fifi?"

"Fargo, I remember Fifi. I also remember Sparky," Carter stated. "Robot dogs don't pee on your leg. But, Doctor Hood also came through and he wasn't as much of a nutcase as everybody thought."

"We evacuated Memphis…" she reminded him.

"But Hood might be able to come up with a way to actually use Doctor Fox's process," Henry put in, "if we ask them both nicely."

"You really think Hood will leave Hawaii?" Carter asked. "All those lovely volcanoes…"

"More importantly, can we get Fox back?" Allison asked.

"Fox hasn't left yet," Zane put in. He looked surprised at the puzzled expressions around the table. "Hey, I really do pay attention to who's working in my department. Stark transferred her to the memory core project right before… you know …and let's face it, there aren't that many projects in the U.S. advanced enough to use her expertise. She said she was looking at taking a teaching gig somewhere. But I also know the D.O.D. was making it hard. She's the only U.S. logic diamond expert not under their thumb and their protection. And I don't think the D.O.D knows exactly how much she knows. In fact, I'm sure they don't know. I'm also sure Stark told them her unauthorized experiment was a total failure."

"Get onto her," Henry instructed Zane. "Set up a meeting with her for tomorrow. I'm betting Nathan saw something that made him think her project might have been salvageable." He looked around the other people at the table. "We should also get together and plan out G.D.'s new organization. I mean… we have the chance here to rebuild almost from the ground up, reorganize things based on what we have learned. Emphasize cross-disciplinary cooperation…"

"That leaves out Parrish," Fargo muttered.

"We need a safety officer," Jo put in. "And a ban on private labs."

"A lot of good things have come from personal off-site labs," Henry argued.

"A lot of _bad_ things have come from personal off-site labs," Jo stated. "One of _your_ devices came through the roof of the sheriff's office on Carter's _first day_ , remember? Could've killed somebody."

"Okay, let's put that issue on the list of things to look at," Henry conceded. "But it did work…"

"Landed in the sheriff's office," Jo stated firmly.

Donner turned to Vincent. "Is this how things normally get done around here?"

Vincent's expression turned thoughtful. "Yeah. An awful lot of G.D. collaboration and planning happened right here. Good thing I have cutting edge anti-surveillance technology in place. Something else the D.O.D. never really figured out. And they don't get that Eureka has a troubleshooting committee for when some experiment's gone sideways. Thorne _really_ didn't get it."

"Troubleshooting committee?" Carter asked.

Vincent shrugged and smiled. "You and Henry, or Doctor Stark when he was alive, and whoever else you figure has projects that might be useful, or caused the problem to begin with. Sheriff Cobb was pretty good, but you're better at it. You see patterns other people miss, useful skill sets that other people don't see as being related to the problem at hand. I don't know how you keep all those pieces in your head. But you do."

"You keep the favorite orders for everybody in town in your head," Carter reminded Vincent.

Henry chuckled. Then his expression turned curious as he observed Carter more closely. "Vincent's right, you manage to keep all of the various projects you've interacted with straight in your head. Cobb never managed that. …wait a minute, how come I'm always the first one deputized, figuratively speaking?"

"You tried quitting once, remember?" Carter said with a grin. "You came right back and volunteered… again."

"Your sister got me elected mayor, _again_ ," Henry groused but it was obvious he wasn't really annoyed.

Carter shrugged. "Wouldn't have worked of people hadn't wanted you to stay. Also, you're still the town expert on translating geek into English."

Carter's expression became thoughtful and he looked at Donner. "You said the possibility of logic diamonds was one reason… What are the other reasons?"

Donner took a moment before answering. "There is an item that was brought here nearly six years ago. It was dubbed 'The Artifact'."

Henry sat back in his chair and stared at Donner. "You know about that too?"

Donner nodded.

Henry sighed, worry creasing his dark face. The Artifact was one of G.D.'s deepest secrets. "Nathan Stark, and others, thought the Artifact was a remnant of the universe before this one and it was also an antenna that connected to the Akashic Field. It was capable of tapping into _all_ knowledge. It went dormant after the explosion that killed Kim Anderson."

"Henry, Kim Anderson's not dead," Grace said gently. "She's serving a life sentence at Leavenworth for murdering her husband during a demonstration for the D.O.D. She claimed he'd been stealing her memories, stealing her research. But there was nothing to confirm her claim. The device she said he used… it didn't work the way she said it did."

"Although her being in prison sure made it weird when her duplicate showed up inside the Columbus probe when it came back to Earth," Zane added. "Mansfield nearly had kittens."

"So Kim's alive, but she murdered Jason?" Henry asked.

"That's… _different_ ," Carter said quietly.

"Then, who died when Nathan tried to get a sample of the Artifact? Did he even _try_ to get a sample?" Henry asked.

"Zane?" Allison asked.

"On it…" Zane started tapping on his pad. After a moment: "Nobody died… There was no explosion. _That_ would have shown up on a daily report even if nothing else did. And do I actually have clearance to access stuff on this Artifact thing without getting into deep sh*t?"

"You do now," Henry told Zane. "Or you will as soon as we do the management transfer from Fargo to me."

"Besides, when did that ever stop you before?" Carter asked with a grin.

"I'm _trying_ …"

"Sheriff Carter," Donner said. "You indicated things were 'different'. Different how?"

Again the group went quiet.

"Guys," Vincent said. "The D.O.D. isn't going to know what we don’t tell them."

"And we have no intention of letting them know how badly Trevor Grant messed things up for you, or the world in general," Donner added. "But we do want to know how things played out differently from what you remember."

"So you can fix it?" Fargo asked.

"You've been in this time-line too long for there to be an easy 'fix'," Donner said. "Plus, since you apparently remember another time-line, one where Trevor Grant never went missing and five strangers never infiltrated Camp Eureka, it seems you got shifted as well."

"We got moved to a different dimension in the multi-verse," Fargo translated. "And the people we replaced… they're out there, somewhere, living our old lives."

"Douglas… you're from a different dimension?" Holly asked, puzzled.

"You never met the 'me' from this dimension," Fargo told her quietly. "I don't think you would have liked him. Nobody liked him."

Carter noted that neither Grace nor Zane made any effort to defend the 'old' Fargo. From what Carter had gleaned from people's reactions to the 'new' Fargo, the 'old' Fargo had been a mean-spirited tin-plated dictator with delusions of grandeur who had been given directorship of Global Dynamics because General Mansfield considered him a compliant coward.

Allison was the first to start. "The other me came home to an autistic child; the other Carter went home to a girlfriend who was moving to Australia…"

"Jo Lupo was facing a Zane Donovan who had just proposed and was waiting for an answer. Only she wouldn't have even known he had asked, or why," Jo said.

Zane reached over and squeezed her hand. "Love you, JoJo," he mouthed at her.

"The other me went home to find he was a bachelor…" Henry added.

"We can't change it back," Donner reminded them.

"I don't think we'd want it changed, really" Carter said. "But I can't speak for the people we displaced. If it was hard for us, it had to have been a lot harder for them. I mean, we don’t know if they even went back into time so they could blame the changes on that. They may have just turned around and things had changed on them."

"Very true. So, what else was different?"

"Kim Anderson didn't murder her husband," Henry started. "Jason Anderson was exposed as a cheat, using a memory device to wipe out short term memory so he could steal other people's research. Kim stayed in Eureka and died in the Artifact Lab when Beverly Barlow sabotaged the containment field. It failed while Kim and Nathan were trying to get a sample from it. Kim was killed instantly, Nathan was injured. The resultant radiation exposure caused Wayne Kwan, Ryan Brock, and Robert Matthew to spontaneously combust a day later."

"We managed to save Nathan," Allison added.

"Other differences?" Donner prompted.

"My son Kevin had autism," Allison said quietly. "He doesn't, now. After the explosion in the Artifact Lab, the 'old' Kevin became 'infected' by the Artifact. I mean it was good in some ways, but it was changing him and the changes were going to kill him. It took extreme measures to save him. Henry ended up in prison for a while for what he had to do… Wait… if the Artifact never released its energy like it did, then 'this' Kevin was never infected…"

"And the other Henry never ended up in prison," Henry added thoughtfully.

"But if Kevin was never connected to the Artifact, how did Dactylos's metal-eating alchemist nightmare bug get taken care of?" Carter asked.

"Doctor Stark figured out the fix. Although how he managed it…" Zane shook his head.

"But he… if the fix _had_ come from Kevin, like it did before, Nathan would have taken the credit to protect Kevin," Allison put in. "So we don't know if it was Kevin or not."

"Maybe we're just assuming that this Kevin was never connected because he has better communications skills," Carter said. "What if he was connected, but in a more controlled way since the Artifact wasn't damaged."

"This Kevin is smart, but he's not a super genius," Allison said.

"You're sure about that?" Carter asked with a smile. "You're the one who suggested this Kevin might have come up with the fix for the metal-eating bug and Stark covered for him. And exactly who was it that created the super-smart serum and put it in my coffee?"

"It wasn't his fault for not realizing how it would interact with the Z-waves in your brain," Allison said. "And you really did impress my brother. That was _not_ easy."

"What else?" Donner prompted again, choosing to ignore Carter and Allison for the moment.

"The Archimedes statue was bronze," Jo said. "I was Carter's deputy, not Andy. G.D. didn't really have a chief of security. Although it needed one."

"If anyone at 'old' G.D. had asked, I would have been behind your promotion one hundred percent," Carter commented to Jo. "You know that, right?"

"I was a gofer for the G.D. director," Fargo said. "Allison was head of G.D. My grandfather Pierre was locked in cryostasis in 1957. Doctor Sandrov put his own name on Pierre Fargo's work, but the truth finally came out when grandpa was revived in 2007. Julia Golden was recruited to G.D. and we dated for a while. Here we never met and she's married to an astronaut."

"Fargo, how did your dad die?" Vincent asked. He was concentrating on his own pad.

"Lab accident when I was a little kid. They said he pushed the wrong button," Fargo said.

"And your mom?"

"Mom died of cancer two years later," Fargo said. "I was raised by my grandmother."

"Got it…" Vincent announced. "And… oh my gosh… no… no…"

"Vincent?" Henry and Donner both said, alarmed at Vincent's reaction to whatever he was looking at.

Vincent's expression was one of horror as he looked up. "It's gone… I located a couple of possibilities for where your alternates might have ended up and one of them just… it's gone… It's just _gone_."

"Did you catch its designation?" Donner asked.

"Yes, but… Considering how I think it happened… I think more may be in danger."

"Wait, Vincent's device can detect other dimensions?" Henry asked. "Nancy Russell's device required huge amounts of energy and could only contact the one nearest to ours."

"This one can see into closest hundred or so, but there's no cross-communication, no risk of the device drawing them closer," Vincent said, wiping tears from his face. "And you shouldn't even know about this… This makes Section 5… _Nobody_ can know about this… But I wanted to check on your alternates… I mean, those are the people _I_ knew… and now it looks like they're gone. Poofft."

"Vincent, you're babbling," Donner said. "Any clues as to what went wrong there?"

"At an educated guess, the D.O.D. walked away with necessary pieces of equipment during the big data transfer, like they did here, and when bad things started happening there was nobody to figure out how to fix it."

"You mean our alternates, the people originally from this time-line, weren't in their Eureka?" Henry asked.

Vincent nodded. "I was in the process of tracing things out, but it looked like Allison left Eureka only a few days after _it_ happened. Sheriff Carter left and never came back. Jo and Fargo were both arrested at G.D. I'm guessing they tried to access what they thought were normal things for them, only they weren't. Not at _that_ G.D.  Henry was arrested, but not for trying to get into G.D. secure areas. I think I caught something about him trying to contact Beverly Barlow."

"So they all gave themselves away and got sanctioned," Jo stated logically.

"Or locked in a looney bin," Zane suggested.

"And because the troubleshooting committee wasn't there, there wasn't anybody to figure out a way to mitigate the effects of the missing quantum field stabilizer," Henry added. "Poofft…"

Allison had gone pale. "My babies… my babies are dead… Those bastards just had to rush things and they killed my babies."

"Allison, honey," Carter said, pulling his wife close. "It was an accident. They had no way of knowing they had taken away equipment that was still in use. They didn't know how dangerous Eureka's toys really were… But the Kevin and Jenna and Zoe that are here with us, they're okay. Remember that… they're okay. And they're the ones we have to care for and worry about right now."

"Vincent, was there any evidence of extra-temporal or extra-planar interference aside from Grant's mess?" Donner asked.

"None that I saw, but I wasn't looking for it either… I really screwed up, didn’t I? I saw it go and I… I couldn't help it." Vincent sounded like he was about to burst into tears.

"Wait… you're not just from Crosstime, are you?" Carter said. It was a statement, not a question. The puzzle pieces were coming together: Donner's cop vibe, even Vincent's incessant gossip-mining. "Or should I say, Crosstime is more than it seems and Vincent is a _lot_ more than he seems."

"You caught us," Donner said with a shrug. "There comes a time when nearly every space-faring race discovers that if you can manipulate space, you can manipulate time. Many races don't make it past that. They try to 'fix' things in their past and end up destroying their future. Some unleash forces they cannot comprehend, forces that utterly unravel their reality. But the ones who survive those initial explorations, those societies create laws and appoint people to enforce them. Laws to prevent tampering with the past, laws to protect privacy, laws against taking advantage of knowledge gotten by illicit means."

"Time cops," Carter said. "You and Vincent are time cops."

Donner didn't deny or confirm his speculation. Vincent just sighed.

"But how does the Artifact fit into all this?" Henry asked. "And what is it?"

"Well, we _don't_ think it's actually from before the beginning. We do think it's extremely advanced technology that is probably from the future. _Our_ experts say the best analogy is that it's a temporal 'black-box'. They _think_ it contains 'records' of every event, every action, on this planet."

" _Every_ action?" Zane repeated suspiciously. "If you could figure out how to access that information, there'd be no place on the planet that would be safe from observation. No privacy except in your own head and maybe not even there. Granted, it would be great for historical research, crime investigations… but still… creating a world where Big Brother could be watching you at all times? Where there's an indelible record of every action, maybe even every thought? Feels a bit too much like the Matrix."

"No wonder the Consortium didn't want it studied too closely," Grace added. "They didn't want anybody else to find out what it was. What it could do."

"But were they trying to keep it from being misused, or trying to figure out how to get it and use it for themselves?" Fargo asked.

"Base on what we've seen of the Consortium, they want it for themselves and they don't want anyone to know what they're up to," Carter stated. "They con people into working for them by claiming they're looking out for the greater good. But their actions say the opposite. The 'greater good' doesn't give anybody the right to commit murder. Doesn't give them the right to kidnap people, enslave them, steal their ideas. So, Barlow and her bunch… they're bad guys."

"Nathan thought the Artifact tapped into the Akashic field, accessed the Akashic records, all the knowledge in the universe. All actions and all equations…" Henry said. "The source of all mathematics and physics… If the Kevins were tapping into that, that would explain how they were able to complete equations that the best minds in Eureka couldn't."

"Nathan used to say that God spoke in mathematics and mathematicians and physicists listened for God's voice," Allison said. "The blessed could hear it and write it down."

"The Artifact may do more than just record facts of history, assuming it records those at all," Henry said as things started to come together for him. "It has all the values and equations of the universe's first state. Everything needed to create and evolve this universe into what we see now… Wait, in the multi-verse there would be related universes, ones that spawned off like copied files. Maybe Artifact contains the indexes and the file descriptors for the various universes. Damage the Artifact and you _may_ render your universe unstable."

"Maybe that's what happened to our old universe. Its Artifact was damaged," Fargo suggested.

"The Artifact creates more questions than answers," Donner said. "Did _it_ choose to be discovered on Earth or did someone else arrange it? Why does it even exist? But it needs to be protected and hidden from those who would damage it and possibly abuse its potential."

"Move it to the old bunker?" Carter asked. "The Instantanium covering the top made the bomb blow down, but I'm betting nobody would bother to look there. The part of the bunker that wasn't filled with Instantanium is _supposed_ to have completely collapsed…"

"You don't think it did?" Henry asked.

"I don't know that it didn't," Carter admitted. "But I'm pretty sure Hood told me that, according to his readings, the damage to the structure appeared minimal, considering everything."

"Will it work?" Donner asked Zane. The others gave Zane a curious look.

"It should," Zane said, studying his pad. "I mean, everybody's written off the old bunker, including the D.O.D. They figure it's radioactive as all hell since it was supposedly an A-bomb that was set off to burn out the contamination."

"But, getting the Artifact out of G.D. will be tricky," Henry stated. "There're 20 layers of concrete and charged-particle barricades surrounding the room and the room itself doesn't show on any of the published schematics."

"But… if we can find the backdoor that was used to get it into G.D…." Zane added. His eyes suddenly rolled up in his head.

"Zane? Zane!" Jo screamed, grabbing him so he wouldn't fall out of his chair. "Zane!"

Allison started to go to him but before she could, he came to his senses and straightened up.

"I… I never want to do that again…" he said shakily.

"Do what?" Allison demanded.

"The Artifact… It's sentient and it just moved itself to a safe place… after getting the necessary info from my brain."

"You need to be checked out," Allison ordered.

"No, I'm okay, really," Zane insisted. "I just wasn't expecting it. Turns out it didn't want to be inside G.D. in the first place but it didn't want to reveal itself and didn't really know where the best place to move to was… until we figured it out just now. I guess for some things you really need boots on the ground. It tried to communicate directly with me and… let's just say it doesn't know its own strength. The information it sent me is already starting to fade… it's everything we thought it was and more, but it doesn't know who or what created the first one – the one who actually observed the Big Bang. It _thinks_ they were created to create and manage the multi-verse.

"It also gave me a warning for Henry and Trevor Grant… 'Before you start messing around with the time-stream, check with Srinivasa Iyengar Ramanujan, James Donner, and Kevin Blake.'"

"Henry, is there something you want to tell the rest of us?" Grace asked.

"Not really, no."

"Um, I'm guessing this Ramanujan person is before my time?" Carter asked quietly.

"He died in 1920," Holly said. "Very sad."

"His mathematical discoveries are… legendary," Fargo told Carter. "We're finding more and more things his work pertains to, like black holes, time and space. His work started entirely new investigations into theories of different types of numbers. Mathematicians and physicists spend years trying to grasp what he _intuited_."

Zane ignored the other conversations as he continued. "The Artifact also apologized for what happened with Doctor Carlson. It had hoped that Carlson could help it find a safe place, but Carlson couldn't handle the contact."

"That's not going to happen to you, is it?" Jo asked worriedly.

"I'm made of sterner stuff than Carlson was," Zane assured her. "Besides, it learned some things about human anatomy from Carlson. It really was sorry for what happened."

Donner's expression became distant as though she was listening to far off voices. "Grant is in custody. Mansfield will be here in about a minute, and he is madder than a wet hen."

"And do you happen to know why Mansfield is madder than a wet hen?" Carter asked.

"I'm guessing it's because Eureka didn't blow up as he'd expected," Donner said. She wasn't smiling.

"Please say you're joking." Fargo's eyes were wide with horror.

"I don't think she is," Zane said worriedly. "The quantum field stabilizer should have been listed as an essential piece of equipment that wasn't to be moved until after the data transfer was completed and all experiments were shut down. It was in the first truck out this morning, remember? Mansfield had to have known the data transfer hadn't finished."

Vincent turned off the security field that had obscured the windows.

There was a screech of brakes followed moments later by the front door slamming open.

"What the hell is the meaning of this?" General Robert Mansfield yelled, waving a sheaf of papers. On the street outside the café, trucks could be seen returning to town, driving _toward_ the Global Dynamics building.

"That, General, would be a court order requiring you to return all the equipment and materiel _stolen_ from Global Dynamics during its acquisition by Rockwell Industries," Donner said calmly.

"The Department of Defense owns every stick of furniture in that building. In this _town_!" Mansfield yelled.

"No, General, it doesn't," Donner stated, expression grim. " _Global Dynamics_ owns every piece of equipment, every stick of furniture, in that building. _Global Dynamics_ owns this land and these buildings. You personally signed the order to speed up the closing of the Global Dynamics facility in the face of Rockwell Industries offer to purchase the facility _and_ its equipment – an offer that was accepted pending legal review and specifically included all materiel in the facility _and_ any property owned by Global Dynamics as of the date and time of the initial acceptance. That was last Friday at 6:21PM Eastern Time.

"Knowingly removing materiel from Global Dynamics properties in violation of the sale contract is a blatant attempt to defraud Rockwell Industries. Knowingly ordering the removal of equipment essential to the safe shut down of active processes is, at best, reckless endangerment of the local population, and at worst, treason to an extent you have no concept of."

"Who the hell are you to talk to me like that?" Mansfield demanded.

"My name is Ellen Laurel Clarke Donner," Donner stated clearly. "I am head of the legal team tasked with the orderly transfer of the intellectual and physical properties of Global Dynamics, a D.O.D. _contractor_ , into the hands of the management team assigned by the new owners, Rockwell Industries. And at the moment I am the last person on this planet you want to piss off."

"The president will hear about this!"

"The president already knows," Vincent said quietly. "Along with the editor of the Daily Planet." He held up his PDA. "Conference call."

The door opened and a man in military fatigues walked in carrying a phone. He looked scared half to death. "Sheriff Carter? The President and the Attorney General would like to speak with you." He handed Carter the phone.

Carter hit the speaker phone function so everyone could hear.

"Sheriff, I understand you have a problem on your hands," a voice familiar from television said. Carter had never met the man, but everyone knew his voice. Carter assumed from Vincent's nod that the caller was, in fact, verified as the POTUS.

"Yes sir, Mister President. It appears that someone from the Pentagon ordered removal of stuff from a military contractor that didn't actually _belong_ to the Department of Defense. Made a big mess, could have destroyed the planet, not to mention annoying the heck out of the new owners."

"And you've identified a suspect?" a second voice asked. Carter assumed the second voice belonged to the Attorney General.

"We believe so, sir," Carter responded.

"Feel free to take that person into custody," the president instructed.

"And the charges, sir?"

"Suspicion of theft, to start with," the second voice said. "Reckless endangerment… conspiracy… We'll have a longer list as soon as we get this sorted."

Carter turned to Mansfield. "You heard the man, General. You're under arrest on suspicion of theft and reckless endangerment, not to mention conspiracy and other stuff. You have the right to remain silent…"

"You don't have the authority!"

"Yes, sir, I do," Carter said, stepping forward, handcuffs in hand. "…Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand the rights I have just read to you?"

"Soldier… Stop them!" Mansfield ordered.

The soldier gave him an apologetic look and shook his head. "My orders are to defer to local law enforcement, sir." The soldier then turned to Fargo. "Sir, we need your authorization to return the removed items to the Global Dynamics building."

"You'll need someone to check everything over, too," Henry told them, standing and beckoning Zane to join Fargo and him as they headed out of the café.

Fargo stopped at looked back at Mansfield. "Oh, and don't think you can activate Andy's kill code or overrides. We changed them. His girlfriend didn't want him being a pawn of the military."

Mansfield sputtered incoherently as Carter clicked the handcuffs closed.

**Author's Note:**

> Post Eureka canon. This crosses with the universes created in A Town Called Smallville and Crossing Time. There are also mentions of events from the film 'The Final Countdown' written by Thomas Hunter, Peter Powell, and David Ambrose.


End file.
